German Secret Weapons of WWII

Towards the end of World War II, Nazi scientists and engineers were working on a number of destructive and innovative devices.

The Germans were losing the war and desperate to come up with weapons that would drive the allies back and give them victory. Germany’s best scientists and engineers were frantically working on new projects.

Some of these were quite futuristic for the time, here are ten of them.

1. The Landkreuzer P 1500 Monster

This is the Schwerer Gustav, a massive 80cm railway gun; no pictures exist of the P 1500.

The Landkreuzer was an artillery piece that would have been 42 meters (138 feet) long and would have weighed 1500 tons. Its armor would have been 250 millimeters thick and propelled by four submarine diesel engines. It would have needed a crew of over one hundred.

Its principal armament was to be an 800 mm Schwerer Gustav K (E) railway gun. This would have been mounted on a fixed turret so that the Landkreuzer would have been a self-propelled gun rather than a tank.

Such a gun would have been able to launch shells without having to directly engage the enemy. Two 150 mm SFH 18/1 L/30 Howitzers and a number of 15mm MG 151/15 autocannons would have added to its power.

No prototypes of the Landkreuzer were made.

2. The Junkers Ju 322 Mammut

The Junkers Ju 322 Mammut (Mammoth) was a heavy transport military glider, resembling a giant flying wing, proposed for use by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Only two prototypes were ever built.

The Mammut was a huge glider made entirely of wood, which was a cheap material at a time when quality resources were scarce. It was designed as a transport in 1940.

Two prototypes were constructed. It could carry 20,000 kilograms, the weight of a Half-Track, PzKpfwIV medium tank or Flak 88 an anti-aircraft gun with all its crew, ammunition, and fuel.

The cockpit was somewhat to the port side, above the cargo bay. The aircraft had stabilizing fins and a rudder. It was armed with three MG15 machine guns.

3. The Sun Gun

The Heliobeam or Sun Gun was truly the stuff of science fiction. This super-weapon would operate from a space station orbiting the earth at a distance of 8,200 kilometers (5,100 miles).

A metallic sodium reflector 9 square kilometers (3.5 square miles) wide would focus the sun’s energy and project onto the Earth. It was calculated that such a weapon would be able to boil the ocean or incinerate a city.

Plans for a space station were developed by physicist Hermann Oberth in 1929. Germans scientists claimed after the war that the Heliobeam would have been completed within ten years.